[HN Gopher] Addictive-like behavioural traits in pet dogs with e...
___________________________________________________________________
Addictive-like behavioural traits in pet dogs with extreme
motivation for toys
Author : wallflower
Score : 132 points
Date : 2025-10-12 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| If there's a frisbee or ball in sight, my female border collie
| won't even attend to basic bodily needs. And she'll chase the
| object while she's in pain and exhausted or shivering with cold
| and not notice. She has lupoid onychodystrophy which causes her
| nails to come in deformed and split and painful and she'll still
| obsess on some running play/task while she's got bleeding paws
| and can barely walk. An an owner we have to intervene to remove
| the object of obsession and force disengagement.
|
| This is a product of centuries of breeding to focus on a task and
| enjoy the task above all else.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Exactly, we made them this way
| captainclam wrote:
| The two dogs I know that share this behavior are border
| collies.
| librasteve wrote:
| my sprollie is the same (half nap collie) ... he is 100% ball
| obsessed
| tsol wrote:
| I wonder if autism is a similar kind of selection process. They
| are people selected by nature to be obsessed about different
| things, but this could be incredibly fruitful if you end up
| focused on the right thing. Of course in this situation we have
| no control over the selection process, it's a product of living
| in a world that's difficult to
| AbortedLaunch wrote:
| You may find the recently published article "A General
| Principle of Neuronal Evolution Reveals a Human-Accelerated
| Neuron Type Potentially Underlying the High Prevalence of
| Autism in Humans" interesting.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/9/msaf189/8245036
| namanyayg wrote:
| Avoiding spoilers, Peter Watts' works have parts which show
| what happens when this idea is taken to its logical extreme.
| gigatree wrote:
| It's kind of funny how the idea of behavior being a result of
| breeding goes out the window when it comes to pitbulls.
| Retrievers naturally retrieve, collies naturally herd, but when
| a murder-canine eats a family it's all "oh it could have been
| any breed".
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| It's just wokery innit. Can't even train dogs to murder
| children nowadays because the woke brigade will cancel you.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it's more nuanced - "pitbull" isn't a single breed, it's a
| category
|
| none of the dogs in the category were bred to kill
| indiscriminately - they were expected to obey handlers just
| like any other working breed
|
| and there are a number of fighting breeds outside of the
| category as well
| superkuh wrote:
| >Behavioural addictions, characterised by compulsive engagement
| in rewarding activities despite adverse consequences in the long
| term, are more heterogeneous and less well-understood than
| substance addictions
|
| Indeed. Mostly because every study on "behavioral addictions" is
| published in third tier journals or is a negative result in real
| journals. It's something that doesn't actually exist in mammals
| and it's current popularity is mostly from profit seeking scams
| for rehabilitation "clinics" preying on the 'screens are
| addictive' meme burning through current parent populations.
|
| And despite the headlines suggesting otherwise, and the press
| likely running with those false headlines, *the actual study
| itself does not find any addictive behavior*. A null result.
|
| >Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and humans
| affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from conclusively
| characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting addictive behaviour,
| given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised
| criteria. It is important to be cautious when pathologising
| behaviour, especially given that even in humans, addictive
| behaviours are still difficult to define and measure.
| stirfish wrote:
| >It's something that doesn't actually exist in mammals and it's
| current popularity is mostly from profit seeking scams for
| rehabilitation "clinics" preying on the 'screens are addictive'
| meme burning through current parent populations.
|
| What about gambling, eating, or shopping?
| superkuh wrote:
| Gambling is not an addiction. It is "gambling disorder" and
| it was grandfathered into the DSM. It is explicitly not an
| addiction medically. Eating and shopping are two great
| examples not erronously grandfathered in, which committees
| repeated find are not addiction, but which those scammers
| love to profit off of.
| hippo22 wrote:
| "Gambling Disorder" is in the disorder class "Substance-
| Related and Addictive Disorders" in DSM-5 though.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Many behaviors have been added and removed as "disorders"
| from the DSM as politics of the time demanded.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| So why do you think people continue to gamble, even after
| it has ruined their and their families lives and finances?
| Slot machine addicts will literally void their bladder
| rather than stop playing for 5 minutes to use the restroom.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Because people make poor choices and it's usually their
| own fault.
|
| We used have words like "vice" and "sin" to describe
| these poor choices, but thanks to post-60s radical
| individualism, the only vocabulary for describing
| maladaptive behavior that remains of the language of
| medicine. Therefore, everything bad someone does is a
| "disease" for which he needs "therapy" or "treatment".
| We've utterly lost the capacity for describing
| deficiencies of the conscience.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Why would many, many, many people choose to piss and shit
| themselves in public instead of stopping for a few
| minutes to use the restroom? Why would someone choose the
| push a button every 5 seconds to the point where it ruins
| their life?
|
| Put it another way: why would gambling companies continue
| to develop gambling machines? Why not stop with the
| mechanical, one-armed-bandit of the early 1900s if what
| they do has no effect on people?
| quotemstr wrote:
| Perhaps by the time someone's at the shitting at the seat
| phase of a gambling habit the neurological feedbacks
| arising from the intermittent reward schedule have become
| too strong for him to resist on his own.
|
| But who made him start gambling in the first place? It's
| not like people who start gambling don't know how it
| ends. The most addictive slot machine in the world can't
| compel someone to sit at it for the first time. People
| KNOW these machines are addictive and choose to use them
| anyway.
|
| It used to be cultural common knowledge that the wages of
| sin is death.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| _Perhaps by the time someone 's at the shitting at the
| seat phase of a gambling habit the neurological feedbacks
| arising from the intermittent reward schedule have become
| too strong for him to resist on his own._
|
| Bingo. The machines don't play themselves, of course. But
| at the same time, the manufacturers and casinos know
| exactly what they are doing. I would say:
|
| _We 've utterly lost the capacity for describing
| deficiencies of the conscience._
|
| applies to those the manufacturers and casinos as well.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| My understanding was that self-professed gambling addicts
| -- unlike casual gambers -- were discovered to get the same
| shot of dopamine to their system when losing as the do when
| winning. Why would that not qualify as "medically
| addicted"? (IANA-Doctor)
| KittenInABox wrote:
| If this is true, why do GLP-1 drugs which are just hormones
| also shown to have an effect on gambling?
| croemer wrote:
| > I'm shocked to see an informal survey based study (which will
| just confirm the owners pre-existing biases and opinions) being
| published in Nature of all things.
|
| It's not "Nature", it's "Scientific Reports" with impact factor
| of only 3.8 vs 48 of "Nature".
|
| Sure the publisher is "Springer Nature", and the domain is
| "nature.com" but that doesn't make the journal "Nature".
| quotemstr wrote:
| You're right. That's it. I'm going to make a browser
| extension that'll examine any paper I'm reading and color the
| address bar according to the impact factor of the journal in
| which it appears and the h-indexes of the authors.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It would be good to apply it to HN.
| cheshire_cat wrote:
| Sounds useful, please share it here if you end up
| implementing it!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| A lot of good work is published in scientific reports.
| Arech wrote:
| and sometimes a total unbelievable junk...
| unkulunkulu wrote:
| can you provide more context for this claim? my intuition and
| experience tells me the opposite.
|
| what is the definition here? are impulsive avoidance copings
| like playing a video game instead of doing the hard work of
| addressing the worries/planned hard activities not a "video
| game addiction"?
|
| and if we are talking physical withdrawal, then how should we
| call the same aspect of nicotine/alcohol addiction mechanics?
| qnleigh wrote:
| > given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised
| criteria
|
| The quote you cite doesn't support your claim. If there is no
| established criteria, then no amount of evidence will establish
| the link. But absent a rigorous definition, they are still
| giving evidence for a qualitative similarity between human
| addiction and the observed animal behavior. That's not a null
| result.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Well, my fellow CBT practitioners would disagree.
|
| There are things you don't do but you understand not doing them
| is hurting you, so you decide to follow CBT (for example -
| there are other ways, but CBT has decent efficiency although
| it's expensive). They don't really need to be classified
| disorders or fobias.
|
| Similarly, there are things you do and you realize not doing
| them would be beneficial to you. So you try to stop them and
| you realize it's hard. Again, you can use CBT or another method
| (or even medication in some cases). Whether you classify these
| things as "behavioral addictions" or use another term is
| secondary, the phenomenon itself is very real and I find it
| baffling anyone would dispute that.
| delichon wrote:
| Perhaps not surprising, working breeds - many of which are known
| to have been artificially selected for high toy or predatory
| motivation - were overrepresented in the sample.
|
| This is the vibe I get from my golden retriever. Chasing the
| tennis ball is more than play, it's a justification for life, her
| contribution to the pack. Actually eating food has a higher
| priority than chasing the ball, but not much else does. When I
| got her I thought that the "retriever" part was optional but it
| turns out to be obligate. As in I'm obligated to throw the damn
| ball.
| hippo22 wrote:
| Watching a dog that likes playing fetch is cathartic. I truly
| wish I had that level of purpose and fulfillment in my life.
| Natsu wrote:
| No take, only throw.
| shpx wrote:
| Dog breeds are not real animals, they're some sort of half-
| artificial thing created by imperfectly writing some people's
| desire into another species's genetic code.
|
| If you make an artificial thing that really wants to do some
| specific thing, like a computer endlessly printing "hello
| world" millions of times a second, it's not surprising to see
| it do the thing it was created to do. I wouldn't say the
| computer "wants" to print hello world, so I don't see the dog
| as doing what it truly wants to do if it's a genetic
| predisposition human breeders forced into it. I see the
| expression of a society of dog breeders and people's idea of
| a game called "fetch" which was relatively easy to transition
| a species towards step-by-step using artificial selection.
| teekert wrote:
| Dogs were domesticated by sort of not letting them grow up.
| We selected for the ones that retained puppy features into
| adulthood. They don't loose big eyes, hanging ears,
| retained playful/less aggressive behavior that is better
| for living with siblings.
|
| Perhaps the obsession with fetching came with that?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Also, _Humans_ were domesticated by sort of not letting
| them grow up. Maybe that's the reason we get along so
| well.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > As in I'm obligated to throw the damn ball.
|
| As opposed to my Newfoundland that will tease me with the ball
| and then I'm obligated to chase her until she wears out, I
| catch her, or I bribe her with a treat.
| turkey99 wrote:
| I'm hoping this is a puppy trait. Thats what my one year old
| golden-doodle does
| philiplu wrote:
| Sorry - my 9 year old golden doodle still doesn't get the
| concept of fetch. He's an expert at keep-away though. Throw
| the toy or ball, he'll chase it gleefully, then come back
| to just out of reach, drop the toy, and hover over it
| waiting for me to make a move at it. He'll lunge for the
| toy, back up a bit, drop it, and the cycle continues.
| tempestn wrote:
| 4 year old golden doodle, exactly the same thing.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It can be trained, at least in some cases.
|
| When attention/reward/engagement cease when the ball is not
| returned and dropped - literally turn around and walk away
| dejectedly - but a successful return results in praise,
| treats, and MORE FETCH, my dog quickly learned to bring it
| back.
|
| For my sister's dog, the key is to have a second ball
| alluringly held ready to throw - the one that's already in
| the mouth is forgotten about except as a means to get the
| second ball thrown. The dog has to bring it "all the way!"
| (point at the ball that was dropped halfway back) before
| the second ball is thrown.
|
| It's definitely a tough one to solve, though, especially
| when the act of running around with the ball in the mouth
| is the rewarding behavior...
| HankB99 wrote:
| Our kids have a Rottweiler that _loves_ to chase a ball,
| Bring it back and then dare us to try to take it away from
| her. She can drop if convinced. Or I have a second ball that
| is more interesting, causing her to drop the other ball. She
| can hold two balls in her mouth so I have to wait for her to
| drop the first ball before I throw.
|
| She also has a large (about 1 food diameter) ball that can't
| possibly fit in her mouth and I can kick that at which point
| she'll drop the little ball and try to get the big one in her
| mouth.
| ivape wrote:
| The dog is not reflecting on its true nature. If that is true,
| then it's possible there are many beings, including us, who are
| not reflecting on their true nature. It shows the meditative
| power a human actually has. For example, if a parent actually
| sits down and realizes they'd die for their child no matter
| what, it would sort of be like the dog realizing how far it
| would go for a tennis ball. Only a human being can reflect and
| change, the dog cannot (it's one of the reasons humans fall in
| love with dogs, they realize the thing is utterly innocent).
| qbit42 wrote:
| Is this falsifiable? I would be hesitant to claim that this
| is unique to humans. I'd probably agree with dogs, but the
| line is much blurrier with primates, for example.
| ivape wrote:
| I'm open to any evidence. I doubt we can find a Chimpanzee
| that sat, thought about it for awhile, slept on it, and
| then decided it's time to live like a Bonobo. I think the
| best evidence we have are actual metamorphosis that you see
| from a tadpole over to a frog, things of that sort. We're
| the only species that can do something to our nature
| actively.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| Because we basically have none.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| like serfs being susceptible to doom scrolling
| analog8374 wrote:
| Or progression fantasy fiction.
|
| Mmmmmmmmmm! Sweet sweet progress!!!
| hinkley wrote:
| There's some documentation out there suggesting the original
| Labrador retrievers had food obsession as a trait in common
| with bidability, which is why more than half of them end up
| chonky. Not all have the gene but odds are high.
|
| There's a guy who trawls dog rescues looking for retrievers who
| are toy obsessed and then trains them to hunt truffles. He
| reasons you can't reward them with food for finding even
| tastier food, so you have to train them with ball time as a
| reward/distraction when they find a trove.
| bell-cot wrote:
| _From a dog 's PoV_, are truffles actually tastier than high
| quality dog treats?
| hinkley wrote:
| Truffles are, it turns out, highly attractive to most
| mammals. The scent makes us want to dig them up. They're so
| strong to overcome the layer of soil on top of them.
| sqircles wrote:
| Labs in general are notorious for having insane food drive to
| the point where when you run into one that does not, they're
| certainly an exception. All dogs in general have food drive,
| as it is a necessity to live, but they're given basically
| unlimited access to it which diminishes it's value in their
| psyche.
|
| Once you pull that prey drive out of a working dog and
| associate it with something such as a ball, there's no
| greater satisfaction this planet than doing the thing for
| that animal. It usually works better as a reward for what
| we're doing, is more instant, but also it can be deadly for a
| dog to eat food when they're at working-level activity.
| brandall10 wrote:
| I grew up with a cocker spaniel obsessed with tennis balls to
| the point of covering his food with them and letting it rot.
| Looking into his eyes conveyed no emotion and he didn't seem to
| care much for affection. He was a tennis ball tracking machine.
|
| There was nothing you could do to satiate his desire. If you
| gave in to a catch session, you could throw it 100 times, he
| would start coughing/convulsing from exhaustion, yet still drop
| a ball at your feet begging you to throw it. You could probably
| have killed him with it.
|
| If no one was playing catch with him he would spend hours
| scouring the neighborhood for balls hidden in bushes. At one
| point I believe he had over 20 balls piling up in various
| places in our backyard. We would regularly take his balls away
| so he only had a couple, but more would magically appear.
|
| We did have a little fun with this. My dad would use him as a
| tennis practice 'partner'. And we built a tennis ball cannon
| powered by M80s (note: this was mid-80s in the SFV when/where
| things like bottle rockets and blow guns were legal).
|
| I've had to put down quite a few animals, and he was the only
| one were there was no sadness, only relief when his time came,
| esp. after 15 long years of having to pander to this obsessive
| behavior.
|
| My belief is animals experience something similar to autism,
| and he was as far along the spectrum as possible, to the point
| where the only thing that defined him was his working instinct.
| That million years of mind-meld evolution w/ humans? Simply not
| there.
| bitwize wrote:
| No take. Only throw.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw
| jancsika wrote:
| > As in I'm obligated to throw the damn ball.
|
| Just imagining your retriever feeling obligated to sit
| patiently by your side as you contribute to the pack by
| deconstructing your life while staring lifelessly at a flashing
| screen.
| squishy47 wrote:
| i have a Lab/Staffie mix and he has insane retriever drive when
| we get the tennis ball launcher out. pupils dilate and nothing
| else matters, to the point that we had to ban launcher because
| he kept loosing his thumb claws from sliding on the grass when
| the ground is too hard. Before we banned it his muscles were
| massive, rippling shoulders etc. When we had his (non-tennis)
| balls removed he developed insane food drive, the vet said this
| was common, to the point he'll raid the kitchen at night if we
| don't lock it down. The boy is build to do 1 of 2 things, eat
| or fetch!
| cs702 wrote:
| This research only confirms what many dog owners already know,
| but it still deserves an Ig Noble Prize.[a]
|
| ---
|
| [a] https://improbable.com/ig/about-the-ig-nobel-prizes/
| superkuh wrote:
| It doesn't though. Only the headline implies that. If you read
| the discussion you find the authors of this study do not claim
| any addictive behaviors were found.
| cs702 wrote:
| I disagree. The OP states in the first sentence of its
| "Conclusion" section:
|
| > To conclude, there appear to be parallels between excessive
| toy motivation in dogs and behavioural addictions in humans.
|
| Understandably, however, the must authors qualify and frame
| their conclusion, so later on they add:
|
| > Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and
| humans affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from
| conclusively characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting
| addictive behaviour, given the absence of established
| benchmarks or standardised criteria.
| herghost wrote:
| We've recently come to this conclusion with our Cockapoo. His
| mother was a working Cocker Spaniel.
|
| When the weather is poor we have often tried to get shorter walks
| in dry spells but augment it with as much ball time as possible
| to make sure he's getting enough exercise (since he generally
| dislikes bad weather).
|
| It's become apparent that there's no possibility of satiety
| through chasing the ball though. He will simply go forever,
| however tired he looks.
|
| I joked that as a Labrador will seemingly eat itself sick, a
| Spaniel will run itself lame.
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| For a breed that is partly bred to flush out game, throwing a
| ball is incredibly adrenaline inducing and will not tire them
| out - they'll just keep going till they fall down. Working
| cockers are one of the breeds susceptible to exercise induced
| collapse, albeit rare it shows how insanely motivated they are.
|
| To get them tired, you need to chill them out and have them use
| their brain and/or nose.
|
| Maybe try some sniffing games, sit down during the walk and
| have them just take in the environment, do some obedience that
| makes them think, or throw their food in the grass and have
| them figure it out.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| We have a springer, cocker and a sprocker. We knew that addiction
| to these things were a problem and so we didn't allow it to
| develop. I do think that people who are constantly throwing
| balls, especially with a wanger, are idiots.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Where are you that you refer to a ball thrower as a "wanger"? I
| suspect anyone from the common wealth or the UK would find this
| quite amusing.
| _joel wrote:
| I must be a bad person as my dog loves his balls being thrown
| in a wanger
| mrlatinos wrote:
| You know your dogs' breeds were susceptible to enjoying fetch
| so you never played fetch with them. Ah yes those poor idiots
| who actually work their dogs for their bred purpose.
| user____name wrote:
| One of my best friends has a toller (canadian duck retriever)
| that's a total ball junkie, it's all he seems to live for. I too
| often played fetch with him as a pup and now he goes completely
| loco any time I show up at their house. So I accidentally
| conditioned him to see me as mr playtime, oops. Nowadays I try to
| just play frisbee and tugging games whenever I'm over for some
| time. When a ball is in sight, the world just disappears.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| If you ever get a chance to see sled dogs in Alaska or wherever,
| holy shit do those dogs ever want to pull a sled. I've never seen
| an animal so fixated.
| brap wrote:
| What if you never trained them to pull, and they never observed
| that behavior? Would they still want to do it?
| rini17 wrote:
| It's pretty hard to avoid any situations where pulling is
| possible. Such as on leash. You usually have to intensely
| train working dogs _not_ to pull on leash.
|
| They would still fixate on other behaviors they are trained
| on. And if not trained and neglected, often have destructive
| behaviors.
| brap wrote:
| My bad, I meant specifically pulling a sled
| rini17 wrote:
| It's not about sled. They just naturally pull. I have a
| GSD that has never seen a sled or dog pulling anything.
| But my crazy ex very easily teached the dog to pull him
| while on scooter or bicycle.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Just a guess but I would imagine the behavior is deeply
| instinctive by this point.
| froh wrote:
| there is a lovely book about them "born to pull"
| Arech wrote:
| My dog (Briard) isn't just addicted to play fetch with balls..
| Since he knows that when another dog enters the dog park, the
| ball will be removed/hidden from him (to prevent the dogs
| clashing trying to get the ball), he becomes hostile to the dog
| entering the park, actively trying to prevent them from doing so!
| This happens only if we started to play with balls. If not, he'll
| be totally friendly... What an ass!
| ajkjk wrote:
| I read somewhere that domesticated dogs are to some degree bred
| to stay in their "childlike" state, so in a way they act like
| wolf puppies that never get older. Probably different breeds have
| different degrees of this. But anyway, I wonder if there is
| supposed to be some counterbalancing "maturity" or
| "responsibility" impulse that would cause them to decide not to
| do the thing, but since that has been bred out / disabled, they
| just run on impulse forever.
|
| Incidentally I feel this way also: like I never fully grew up,
| and I easily regress to being trapped in a childlike state where
| I'll e.g. play video games all day. To snap out of it I have to
| "remember" to be an adult, like it's easily forgotten especially
| if my daily life doesn't ask me to have any serious
| responsibilities. maybe dogs don't have any responsibilities so
| they have no reason to stop playing.
| croisillon wrote:
| you might be thinking of neoteny
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#In_domestic_animals
| ajkjk wrote:
| aha, didn't know the name for it, thanks
| Sharlin wrote:
| Indeed most domestic animals exhibit some degree of neoteny, or
| juvenile characteristics as adults, including humans ourselves.
| We've sort of domesticated ourselves.
| spike021 wrote:
| my shiba inu rarely plays with any of his toys these days. he's
| 4.5 years old. of course that breed is typically known as being
| more primitive, so i wonder if that can be attributed to it.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| This is a really fun 16 minute listen to how this precise dog
| behaviour is exploited to eradicate rats on Lord Howe Island.
|
| They search specifically for dogs obsessed with ball chasing and
| turn them into rat hunting dogs.
|
| There's funny bit where they talk about finding a dog that had
| learned how to use the tennis ball firing machine and spent all
| day chasing a tennis ball and putting it back in the machine
| which fires the tennis ball in a never ending loop.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/dogs-help...
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| Slightly off topic, but I once had a Siamese cat. I could not
| teach her to fetch a ball, but she could very well teach me to
| throw again. And it had to be a yellow foam ball - none of the
| other colors were of any interest.
| tguvot wrote:
| I have 2 standard poodles that come from working (hunting)
| lineage. After few throws of tennis ball they realize that game
| is rigged, and just go away, making me to go and retrieve the
| ball
| emerongi wrote:
| My grandparents had a hunting dog. She did not care about
| "play-time" at all. On the other hand, she got excited when she
| heard "forest" or "rabbit". Had to be careful with those words.
|
| I think when she wasn't in the forest, she was just waiting to
| go there again. Instead of ball, it was forest.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| ffs. What does this study tell anyone about anything?
|
| > Behavioural addictions, characterised by compulsive engagement
| in rewarding activities despite adverse consequences in the long
| term, are more heterogeneous and less well-understood than
| substance addictions, and there is a relative lack of
| translational research.
|
| Does that make sense to anyone?
|
| "more heterogeneous" (trans: different)
|
| "less well-understood: (trans: I have no idea, but I need to
| finish this paper)
|
| "adverse consequences" (trans: Who knows? But, I surveyed pet-
| owners for their opinion, and cited some other source)
|
| "relative lack of translational research" (trans: sounds good,
| whatever it means)
| card_zero wrote:
| "Relating to the transfer of scientific knowledge into
| practical applications", apparently.
|
| _Dogs can mess themselves up for these rewards in various
| ways, and nobody much has worked out any useful facts about it
| yet._
|
| ... _including us._
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